


By the Bed

by AngeNoir



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Codependency, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Insular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 04:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: Sleeping by one another's bed became something of a habit. It mimicked what they showed the world: two made into one, watching one another's backs.Hansel and Gretel. Gretel and Hansel.If they had each other, they didn't need anyone else.





	By the Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jungle_ride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungle_ride/gifts).



> so there's no set age for young!Gretel, so I just assumed young!gretel and young!hansel were the same age - 13. Then, looking at the adult actors ages... Gretel is 27 and Hansel is 42???
> 
> Soooo, because Hollywood, I'm just making both Gretel and Hansel 27 at the time of the movie.
> 
> also, I tried _very hard_ to turn this into something beyond just a platonic relationship, but I could not figure out how that would fit with the movie. I definitely intended it as pre-relationship, them growing closer and closer together over the years, but since it isn't explicitly stated I didn't tag for that. sorry. x.x;;

It started out innocently enough. Of course it did – it always did. Everything between them had always been innocent.

It had come from the two of them living on the edge of a town. The children in the town were cruel, in the way that children were, and it was easier for the twins to simply play with one another than try to make other friends. Their mother hadn’t seemed to mind that they kept close to the house; indeed, she seemed to prefer it, always fretting when they went with their father into town those few times the did over the year.

Gretel and Hansel grew up doing everything together. When they were ten, they had discovered a bird’s nest, and had spent countless afternoons digging for worms and beetles and leaving them in the nest. When they were twelve, they had had their first big fight – for half a day, they had refused to speak to one another. It had made Gretel more anxious than she had liked to admit, but she didn’t want to be the one to give in.

They had been in their beds, backs turned towards one another, when she heard a soft thud, and then some few quiet movements. She didn’t move, not wanting to give in, but when there was no more movement or sound, she risked glancing over her shoulder.

Hansel’s bed was empty.

She nearly panicked – nearly threw her covers back, jumped for their mother, trying to figure out where Hansel could have gone – but then, by chance, moonlight glinted from the floor.

There, curled up under her bed, practically where she would have to step when she woke up in the morning, was Hansel in his nightshirt, the silver locket against his throat sparkling in the weak moonlight.

The next morning, Hansel had apologized immediately, even though she had been partly in the wrong. He was always a follower, was her brother, and while he teased her like any sibling would, he also clung to her and listened to her decisions.

***

When they were thirteen, they were taken into the forest.

The whole world knew the rest of the story.

…At least, they knew the outside of the story. The world watched the twins emerge from that confectionary monstrosity. Then the world watched as they, at the tender age of fifteen, killed the next witch they met. Then the next, and the next.

And still, the world didn’t know them, personally. They didn’t know that Hansel cried in his sleep, silent tears that tore at her heart – that Gretel couldn’t sleep at all some nights, walked the room soundlessly as she watched Hansel, on the floor by the bed, curl up tighter and tighter. They didn’t know that Hansel was vicious and fearless and terrifying in degrees, willing to go to many extremes just to kill a witch. They didn’t know that Gretel took immense pleasure every time someone challenged her in the bar, dared question her ability to fight, and the savagery she enjoyed dealing out during those brawls.

They didn’t know anything, and so they made up their own stories.

People hailed them as leeches, mercenaries – making profit off of others’ misfortune. In some cities, they had even been accused of _causing_ or _bringing_ the witches to the town, and then making money off of ‘removing’ the witch from the woods or the town or the city.

In any case, Gretel ignored the gossip. She had her brother, they had enough money to buy food, to buy the medicine for Hansel’s sugar sickness that would tear his body from him if given the chance, and to buy a roof over their head. They may have to share a room, since they didn’t have a _lot_ of money, and much of that money went to the horse and cart they kept and religiously maintained. But for two sixteen years-old twins, it was more than enough.

***

At seventeen, though, she had wanted to be more free. She wanted the freedom to explore herself, her body, and the pleasures she heard other women (whores) giggle about at the bar. She wanted to try this new world for herself, and she couldn’t, not with Hansel sleeping either in the bed or on the floor in her room. So she exiled him. They had enough money, they had enough time, and they were certainly old enough to do so. Why shouldn’t they have different rooms?

On the same hand, Gretel knew that most men didn’t like her. Men didn’t like assertive women in general, not really, not in the way Gretel was, and Gretel didn’t know any other way to be. Why should she pretend to be less competent than she was?

The one time it had nearly escalated, well…

See, when they had started keeping to separate rooms, it had worked out more or less okay. Gretel could normally find at least one guy to come back to her room with her, and she had the herbs that would take care of any unwanted pregnancies or issues such as that, and Hansel never complained. Hell, he never said anything at all.

(In retrospect, seven years down the line, she’d look at him curled on the floor in his customary spot and wonder whether what she had done had hurt him, had taken something from him that he’d desperately needed.)

In any case, they kept to separate rooms for almost three full years, but when she was a few months shy of twenty, she had invited a man back to her room that didn’t take her no for an answer, and she had been at a big enough disadvantage that she couldn’t easily push him off. In desperation, she had yelled, screamed her defiance, hoping that the sound would shock him. He had backhanded her, causing her gaze to go blurry – with tears or from the slap, she had no idea. She felt stunned, unable to move, unable to do anything at all.

Hansel, however, Hansel had heard her.

(The man disappeared. Later, they heard of missing posters for _him_ , but neither of them needed to find him. They knew exactly where each piece was buried.)

***

That had put an end to the separate rooms. And, when it came down to it, she didn’t miss the slobbering of the men she had slept with, their awkward humping, the fact that sometimes, _sometimes_ , it worked for her, but more often than not she was highly unsatisfied by the entire experience.

So Hansel’s return and presence didn’t really stifle her in any way. And having him underneath her bed – or above her – listening to his soft breathing, his little grumbles and mumbles, it comforted her in a way she wasn’t expecting.

Now, in this city of Augsburg, there was… something familiar about it. Something that made her have that dream, something that had triggered those memories.

***

Not that she hadn’t had dreams about her parents before. But Hansel, Hansel was the most betrayed by their parents and what had happened, Hansel was the one who had nearly died ten times over before they could find an herbalist who could diagnose and properly treat him for the sugar sickness, Hansel was the one who couldn’t trust people, who _didn’t_ trust anyone, who would shoot first with no questions at all – Hansel refused to speak about them. As eighteen years-old teenagers, sitting in a tavern they probably shouldn’t have been in in the first place, she had a bit of liquid courage in her and she’d turned to Hansel, away from the man that had been trying to hand her another pint. “Hey,” she’d asked, poking him, uncertain if it was good or bad that he had two empty pints in front of him already, “Hey, do you remember what dad used to—”

“No, no, we’re not – we not talking this now,” Hansel had slurred at her, sloshing sticky liquid over the scarred bar. “We don’t – not them. Anything but them.”

“When will we get to – Hansel, Hansel, you just wanna forget them?” she had asked.

He nodded, over-exaggerating the movement. “’Xactly. Good. I promise, too. Just forget. You an’ me. Gretel an’ Hansel.”

***

The dream was – well, she had been plagued with feelings of familiarity for quite some time now, so she wasn’t really surprised by it, but she didn’t know what to do with it. It was important, she knew that, but as she looked down at Hansel on the ground, she knew that he wouldn’t think so. He lived so thoroughly in the present, trying to shove away any reminder of the past at all – from her asking what their father looked like, because she could no longer remember, to her asking what their favorite meal had been as children – he shied away from everything and kept his eyes and his heart firmly in the now.

Still, she felt like she needed to try. It might be he was having similar dreams, if the shift in his breathing meant anything, so she reached out and poked him. “Hey, hey Hansel,” she whispered.

He was still fully clothed – he must have stayed drinking much later than she had realized, if he hadn’t even bothered to remove his trousers – and she wondered if his mildly inebriated state would be helpful or harmful to her attempt to get him to speak about this. But she had to try in some way. Clearing her throat softly to keep his attention, she asked, “Do you remember our mother?”

“We don’t – we don’t talk about them. Those things,” he grumbled. “Go back to sleep.”

He rolled, ending up going fully underneath the bed – something he only really did when he was upset. She couldn’t tell what it was about this place that was both familiar and not, that made her think of things long past and upset her brother enough that he hid from the world under the elder twin’s bed.

But she knew that she’d fight to the death to protect him, and she knew he would do the same for her.

That was enough for her.

***

At the end of it all, traveling with Ben and Edward had been… difficult. It was hard to hide from the two how much they needed one another now, how much they clung to one another since they had learned the truth about their mother. How much Gretel had desperately wanted to curl up in Hansel’s arms as if they were three once again, twined around one another while their father built bigger ones than the nursery cradle they still shared.

The first time after gaining Edward and Ben that they stopped at a town, for the first time since she was nineteen and reeling from what someone had tried to do to her, Gretel paused, hand on her money pouch, as she tried to figure out how many rooms to rent. Edward, well, Edward was no problem – he slept in the cart with the horse, providing protection for the horse (keeping it from being stolen, because someone had stolen their horse twice but never again, Gretel was sure of it) and staying out of sight of humans, who did not accept Edward’s visage as easily as Hansel and Ben had. That didn’t help her dilemma, though, and she tried to figure out what would be best. Three rooms, so Hansel could have his own room? Two, and make Hansel and Ben sleep together? Two, and make Ben sleep alone while Hansel continued to sleep in Gretel’s room? Ben wouldn’t come to the wrong conclusion… would he? Would it matter if he did?

“Are ye jus gonna stare at me allus time?” the innkeeper demanded.

“Two rooms,” she said before losing her confidence.

He snatched the money from her hands and handed her the placards that showed which rooms were theirs. Nodding, she went back to the front room, where Ben and Hansel were drinking.

“I got us rooms, boys,” she said, pushing Ben’s pint away to hand him one of the placards.

She made sure he put the placard in his pocket before allowing him to reach for the pint again. Then came the part she was dreading, and worrying. She turned to Hansel.

“Where—” Her voice, hoarse, squeaked a little, and in embarrassment she cleared her throat before beginning again. “Where do you want to sleep? I’m sure Ben wouldn’t mind—”

“I’m good how we normally do it, Gretel. I don’t want to change it.”

The words were quick, slipping out almost in a plea, and she didn’t know how to hide the relief she felt at Hansel’s words and so didn’t hide it at all, instead inclining her head to the stairs set to the side of the front room. “I’ll be upstairs, then, settling down. Make sure you don’t drink too much of our earnings away. And pour Ben into his room if you need to – I don’t think he’s quite ready for… as much as he’s drunk so far.”

Walking away was both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. Ben was sharp – even drunk as he was, swaying and rocking and slurring his words, he could still hear, and he would probably put two and two together and come up with the right (wrong) conclusion.

But it didn’t matter; she was in her nightshirt by the time Hansel came in, and he closed the door and shucked his trousers with barely any care. “That boy is a menace,” he muttered. “Tried to pick a fight.”

“Oh?” she asked in mild amusement as Hansel, in nothing but his loincloth and shirt, curled up on the floor in his customary spot.

“Luckily, the hat rack was not so accommodating.”

She chuckled, lying down, and drifted off to the sound of his small snorts and snuffles of breathing.

Only to jerk awake, in what felt like no time at all, heart pounding at the formless nightmare that had stolen sleep from her and set her heart racing. Unable to resist – because she would always, _always_ reach out to Hansel when she was hurting – she leaned over the edge of the bed and gently brushed Hansel’s shoulders. “Hansel,” she whispered.

“Mmm, what?” he muttered, rolling a little on his side so he faced her, though his eyes were closed and his words slurred.

“Hansel, do you—”

She cut herself off, because she knew he didn’t like talking about dreams, particularly dreams about their past. Swallowing hard, she looked away. “You with me, yeah?” she said instead.

He made a vaguely affirmative sound, and feeling somehow colder, she curled under the covers and stared at the ceiling, unable to shake the feeling of the dream from her. She’d probably be up and pacing soon – she hadn’t had a bout of her inability to sleep for a while, and she had foolishly assumed she’d grown out of it, she supposed—

There was a creaking noise, and then pressure as the thin bed dipped and Hansel scooted in behind her. “You’re so fucking big, you cow,” he muttered under his breath. “Now I remember why we don’t share as much as we used to.”

His arms came around her, curled her close to his chest, and she fought not to cry. “Even when we shared, we slept in different places.”

“Yeah,” Hansel breathed against the top of her head. “We were stupid. And young.”

She reveled in the warmth of his body, chasing away the night terror that had gripped her so strongly – to the point that her body was slowly relaxing and she could almost breathe again. And then—

“You know,” Hansel said, voice barely a breath in the silence of the room. He paused, and then tried again, the words hard to get out, and she could feel his muscles trembling, the way the words took so long to form, “You know, I used to – to dream every night about mom. Every… every night. And dad too, sometimes. Sometimes. And when you would dream, or ask about them, or anything…”

He held her even tighter, closer to his body, and she could feel him shivering even though they were both under the blanket and sharing body heat.

“I just – it was like, like losing them. Over and over again. Every time I remembered. Every time you asked. So I just… didn’t want to. I wanted to be able to, to roll over and sleep. I wanted to give you what you wanted, but I didn’t want to remember, so I just… stepped back. Let you get a separate room, let that _animal_ —”

“Hansel,” she murmured, voice thick with some emotion she couldn’t name.

“Anyway – I just – I just want to, I want to say, if you want to… to share dreams with me. Or memories. I can’t guarantee – well, it’ll be hard. But I want to try.” His voice cracked, and he buried his face in her hair, but she could feel him whisper against her scalp, “For you, I want to try.”

Gretel and Hansel, Hansel and Gretel. Them against the world – because, by each other’s sides, there was nothing they could not do.


End file.
